


there's a fog

by Kalya_Lee



Category: The West Wing
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Gen, speechwriting feelings, why Sam can't go home again
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-17
Updated: 2019-09-17
Packaged: 2020-10-20 19:53:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,489
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20681003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kalya_Lee/pseuds/Kalya_Lee
Summary: "Toby," says Sam, "I'm not coming back."Four phone calls, after the election.





	there's a fog

**Author's Note:**

> Enormous thanks to Mim for beta-reading and letting me yell about my West Wing feelings nonstop for about a month - I probably couldn't have done this without them, and I definitely wouldn't have loved doing it as much as I did <3

_There’s a fog upon LA  
And my friends have lost their way.  
They’ll be over soon, they said;  
But they lost themselves instead._  
\- The Beatles, Blue Jay Way

***

Sam loses the California 47th on a Sunday.

He’s on the beach early Monday morning, toes dug into the sand, ankle-deep in cold salty water. Shirtsleeves folded up over his elbows, pant legs rolled up past his knees; he’d dressed in a sleepy sort of haze, pre-dawn and pre-coffee, clearly forgetting – well, forgetting. At least he hadn’t put on a tie.

He stands in the surf for long minutes; watches the horizon. Breathes in, breathes out. A bird flies overhead, which is nice. Sam watches; Sam waits. When his toes are numb he goes home and gets back in bed and stays there until Wednesday. 

It’s Friday when the first call comes; it’s still too early. 

“Hey, Josh,” says Sam. He’s standing at his kitchen counter now, fingers wrapped around a warm mug of coffee, eyes shut. “Listen, I appreciate you calling, but I’m not –”

“Sam, it’s Donna,” says the person on the other end of the line. Donna; oh. 

“Donna?_” _says Sam, “Is Josh –”

“He’s okay, he’s fine, I’ve stolen his phone.”

“Oh,” says Sam. He takes a sip of coffee, opens his eyes._ “_Why?”

“Does there really have to be a reason?” says Donna, and Sam can hear her smile over the phone.

He laughs a little, because he can tell that’s what she wants from him, a laugh; and because it’s funny, it is, truly. He’s missed Donna. He’s missed her jokes.

“See, the thing is,” says Donna, “I keep trying to tell him not to call you till he’s over his whole ‘we’ll bathe in the blood of your enemies and drink champagne from their skulls’ schtick but I get the feeling he’s ignoring me, so, you know, I took some preventative measures.”

“Perfectly sensible,” says Sam.

“I agree,” says Donna.

“They should give you a raise.”

“That’s what I keep saying!” and Donna’s definitely grinning now, bright and vindicated; Sam can see it, almost. 

He takes a long breath, another sip of coffee. Puts the mug down; smiles a little. It’s almost – like this. It’s almost, it’s nice. It’s fine.

“You know,” Sam says, “Josh will be just as capable of beheading my enemies without his phone. He just won’t be able to tell me about it, is all.

“Yeah, but then they’ll have no way to prove you were complicit,” says Donna. “Really I’m just trying to protect you.”

“Well now I’m touched.”

“You should be.”

“Really, Donna,” says Sam, “I didn’t know you cared.”

“And now I’m insulted,” says Donna. She does sound it, a little.

“Sorry,” says Sam, “sorry”.

Donna’s quiet for a moment; Sam can hear her breathing, static on the line.

“Anyway,” she says, a little brighter now, “I called because Leo’s put me in charge of booking your flights, and I needed to know if you –”

“Yeah,” says Sam.

“If you had any seat preferences, or, I don’t know, some sort of aversion to Atlanta or someplace –”

“Yeah,” Sam says.

There’s something in his voice, he realises as he says it; he realises, then. He’s not trying to – but there it is, anyway. He can hear it and he knows she can too: there, something.

“Yeah, you do, or?”

“Yeah,” says Sam, “I’ll get back to you on that.”

“Oh,” says Donna. “Okay.”

A pause; Sam walks over to the living room, sits down on the couch. Phone still at his ear. Takes his coffee with him because: why not? It’s nearly eleven and he’s still in pyjamas and the coffee is still – warm, if nothing else, and the windows in the living room are big and he can almost see the sea from here, almost. It’s a bright day today, a bright, lazy day. It’s good. This is good.

“Sam, I really –” says Donna, and Sam can hear her – swallow, take a breath, something, “I really liked your speech. I thought it was a beautiful speech.”

“Thanks,” says Sam. 

“I just –” says Donna, “I thought it was really beautiful.”

“Well, that’s what I do,” says Sam. 

And Donna says, “Yeah.”

And Sam can’t – he’s looking out at the sea, now, or the place the sea should be – looking out from the windows of his nearly-empty rental apartment, and it’s. It’s Friday. It just – it’s Friday. 

“Sam?” says Donna.

“Yeah?”

“Listen, Josh is probably never gonna – I mean he has all the emotional maturity of an underripe watermelon, so – but I know he thinks, I mean we all think, but I know he thinks you were –”

“Donna, I,” Sam says, “I really – you don’t have to speak for him. He can – you don’t have to do that.”

And Donna says, “Oh. Oh, no, I –” and she says, “sorry. I’m sorry, I phrased that wrong,” and she says, “I mean, all of us. We all – all of us. We think you were amazing. We think – it was a beautiful speech, and that you – you ran a great campaign,” and Sam –

And Sam can’t –

“We’re really proud of you, Sam,” says Donna, and Sam exhales.

“Thanks,” says Sam. 

***

The thing is, the _thing is_, Sam could’ve asked Toby for help. It would’ve been okay; Toby would have understood. There might, okay, maybe, there _might_ have been some mockery involved; but then again Toby had only really ever mocked him when circumstances allowed and, well. You know. So: Sam could’ve asked Toby; he knows this now, he’d known it then. Toby would’ve understood. 

But: “Hang on,” Sam had said, instead, “I need to go make a call.”

And then there had been: “Sam?” – this was Toby – and then, from Josh: “wait, what call?”

“Just,” said Sam, “just, you know, a call.”

And then he had stepped outside, and dialled; and the phone had rung, and the night had been warm with a light breeze and Sam could feel his shirt starting to cling to his back, the back of his neck; and the phone had rung some more, this little tinny electronic ring over static hiss, the hum of – and then there had been a click, and:

“Hello?” said Will Bailey.

“Hey,” Sam said, “hey Will, it’s Sam. Sam Seaborn.”

“Oh, hey, Sam!” said Will Bailey, “How’s –”

And Sam had said, “It’s fine.”

And Sam had said, “Listen, could you do me a favour?”

And Will had said, “Of course; how can I help?”

And so Sam had told him, he’d told him, he’d said –

There is a trick to writing speeches, and it goes like this: you don’t write for the camera, or the convention centre, or the conference hall. You don’t write for the crowd. You don’t write for delegates or voters or the reporters in the back row. You write for one person, maybe two people. Two people you want to love you. Two people you want to believe you. That’s who you write for. You keep your eyes on them.

The first speech Sam ever wrote for the President he wrote for Toby Ziegler. The next one he wrote for Josh Lyman. The one after that was for Leo McGarry, because the President had wanted him to; he hadn’t said so, but Sam could tell. It was a while before he wrote one for CJ; when he finally did it he didn’t tell her, he didn’t have to. He just watched to see if he could see it, and he _could_ see it: see her eyes light up, see her breath catch, see her smile. That had always been his favourite part. That had been how he’d known that it had worked.

And there had been speeches for Sam. Of course there had been speeches. There had been speeches in the Oval, in the bullpen, on the campaign trail; in hotel rooms and on buses, in person, over the phone. There had been a speech in his office, once, that the President had given him, given him like the gift it had been, laid out like a prophecy. It’ll be you someday, he’d said, and Sam had listened, and Sam had been glad. Sam had thought, okay. He hadn’t understood what it had meant. He’d thought he had. He’d thought he’d understood. 

He’d understood, he’d thought: that speechwriting is truth-telling. That that was what you did when you spoke: you breathed. You told the truth. You looked your people in the eye and you told them what was true.

He’d said –

Well. “I’m having some trouble with a speech,” is what Sam had said.

And Will had said, “A speech?”

“A concession speech,” said Sam.

“Ah,” said Will, “I see.”

And then there had been some rustling as if of paper and some thudding and scraping as if of drawers, as if Will had been looking for a pen; and Sam doesn’t know this, really, he can’t know this, not for sure, but. Probably, Sam thinks, probably Will had.

The thing is, Sam could’ve asked Toby – but there had been a speech, in Manchester, a speech that Sam hadn’t written. The President gave it in an empty classroom. There had been a speech, and in that speech there had been an apology, and in that apology there had been beauty, Sam knows, but he doesn’t remember, not really. What he remembers is this: there had been a speech, and the President had given it, and when he had given it, he had not been looking at Sam. He hadn’t been looking at any of them. He’d been looking at Toby. He’d been looking at the person he’d told.

The President had said: it’ll be you someday. And Sam had thought he’d understood. And here Sam had been; here Sam was.

And the thing is – but the thing is – here’s what it was, in the end: Toby had been in the room. Toby had been in the room, and Will had not.

“Alright,” Will had said, and Sam had heard – over static, and not clearly, but he had heard – the click of a pen; and the night had been warm, and Sam had breathed, “okay, then. Tell me what you’ve got.”

In the end they only needed half an hour. Turns out it wasn’t really all that difficult after all.

***

“Hey, Sparky,” says CJ, when Sam picks up the phone.

“Hey,” says Sam.

It’s Monday now, Monday again: Monday morning at the beach like a do-over, this time in shorts and a t-shirt and open-toed sandals. Sam is sitting in the sand, his face tilted up towards the sun. He’d left this, a long time ago. He can’t quite remember how. 

“How are you?” says CJ. “What’ve you been up to? Catch any waves, eat any fish tacos? Fish tacos, is that something people eat over there?”

“CJ –”

“Avocados? How about avocados, you been eating any avocados lately?”

“CJ,” says Sam, “you _lived _in California.”

“No, I lived in Los Angeles,” CJ says, and Sam can almost see her: her little half-smile, her bright eyes. “I assume the food is different outside of hell.”

Sam laughs. “No fish tacos,” he says.

“You’re missing out,” says CJ, and Sam smiles, out towards the sea.

It’s a warm day; Sam’s bare-forearmed and lounging, legs thrown out in front of him in something he might, if pressed, describe as a _sprawl_. A wave rises, swells, crashes, foam bubbling gently on the sand. There are birds circling overhead: gulls.

“You doing okay?” says CJ.

“Yeah,” says Sam, “holding up.”

“Great,” CJ says. “Listen, when are you coming back? I hate to rush you but if you don’t get here soon I think Toby’s going to eat the new kid.”

“You mean Will?”

“Yeah, him.”

“What’s Toby doing to Will?”

“Nothing yet,” says CJ, like it really isn’t a threat but, you know, it _is_, “I’m saying _soon _–”

“I heard something about bicycles,” says Sam.

“Oh,” says CJ, “that was a while ago.”

“Well,” says Sam, “that’s reassuring.”

“Isn’t it?”

“Not really.”

“Well, on the bright side, he hasn’t sued us for harassment yet,” says CJ, and Sam can hear – well, the curve of her vowels, is what he can hear. Is what he’s extrapolating from: her vowels, consonants. The curl of the syllables, the lilt of her voice.

Another wave: the swell, the crash, salt-water misting Sam’s cheeks. “Does he know that he _can _sue the White House for harassment?”

“Well, if he doesn’t,” says CJ, “don’t anybody tell him,” and Sam laughs.

“This feels somewhat unprofessional,” says Sam, and CJ says “and none of us have ever been that,” and Sam laughs some more, and he can hear – he _can_, he knows he can, in her voice, not just the sounds but he can hear it. He can hear it: she’s smiling.

“You know,” says Sam, “I’ve really missed you guys.”

And CJ says, “Well, we’ve missed you too, Sam.”

And it’s, it’s –

Sam closes his eyes.

“Sam?” says CJ.

“You –” says Sam, and.

The sea’s out there, still; Sam knows, he can tell, even with his eyes shut. Can feel it, can hear it: the sea, CJ’s smile, the shape of it, the rhythm. Like a heartbeat, and he doesn’t have to see it; it’s there. It’s there. Like longitude and latitude.

“You’re the ones who told me to go,” says Sam.

He puts his free hand down, in the sand. Holds it for a moment, feels: sand between his fingers, trickling through.

“Yeah,” says CJ, “well, that was on the assumption that you would be coming back.”

“You didn’t think maybe I was going to win?”

“Honestly I tried not to think about it at all.”

“Oh,” says Sam.

He sits up, leans forward. Opens his eyes.

“Was that an ‘oh’ like ‘oh, that’s weird’,” asks CJ, slowly, “or like ‘oh, I’m insulted’ or?”

“It – no,” says Sam, “It’s nothing, it was just a sound.”

“Okay,” says CJ.

“A sound of acknowledgement,” says Sam. “You know, general – acknowledgement.”

“Sure,” CJ says, and then: “so should I put you down for next Monday? Maybe next Wednesday?”

“CJ –” says Sam.

“Maybe Friday. Come back on a Friday, that’s what I would do.”

“CJ,” says Sam, “I think I – I think I’m gonna need some more time.”

And CJ says, “Oh.”

She’s quiet, for a moment. They’re quiet. It’s quiet, and Sam, Sam can hear –

“You sure you’re okay?” says CJ.

“Yeah,” says Sam.

“Okay.”

And Sam can hear: background noise, phones ringing, doors slamming, footsteps. Blurred and staticky, but there. There: the roar of the sea. The breeze, like wind, clearly audible. Sam wonders if it goes through the same way, these noises; if CJ can hear it, like he can hear hers. If she knows it like he knows it, eyes closed: this, the place where he is.

“Sam?” says CJ.

“Yeah?” says Sam.

“Just,” says CJ, “soon, okay?”

“Yeah,” says Sam. “Yeah, alright.”

***

Here is a conversation that Sam thinks about sometimes:

He had been with Laurie, in a booth, in a diner, nominally having lunch. This is to say: Laurie had her books spread out in front of her, and Sam had a couple of files out that he needed to review and which weren’t too sensitive to have out in public and maybe get a little coffee spilled on them, and Sam and Laurie had both ordered food, and now Sam was eating it.

And when they had sat there, in a comfortable sort of silence, for a while, and after Sam had been eyeing Laurie’s second sandwich for a couple of minutes, he had asked her, he had said: “do you find me attractive?”

And Laurie had looked up, just a little, and said, “Sam, we’ve slept together.”

And Sam had said, “well, still.”

And then there had been a sort of – moment.

“I find you insufferable,” said Laurie.

“Oh,” said Sam.

“And,” said Laurie, “you need to stop eating my food.”

And then she had retrieved her sandwich and turned back to her book, and about seventeen minutes later some senator had said something in front of some camera somewhere and Josh had been ready to kill him and eat him and mount the leftovers on a pike, and so Toby had called, and so Sam had left. And that had been the end of the discussion.

But Sam had called her, after, and they’d talked on the phone for an hour about her analysis of Leakey v National Trust. And there had been no sandwiches involved in that instance, so she had probably not found him all that difficult to put up with, then.

Sam had found her attractive. He still finds her attractive; he finds a lot of people attractive. He hadn’t wanted to sleep with her again, but that had been a different issue. It wasn’t about sex, what he’d felt about Laurie, the way he’d – clung to her, almost, in a way that was probably a little bit pathetic. It was just, he’d liked her. He liked her. And it was pretty obvious that he annoyed her but she never really tried to make him stop.

He thinks about this conversation sometimes because, he thinks, he misses Laurie, whom he hasn’t seen in the couple of years since she moved to New York to join a firm where her colleagues would know her as something other than Sam Seaborn’s Prostitute Friend. He misses Laurie, who, he thinks, probably liked him really a lot too, in the same way that Mallory probably also liked him, somewhat; in the same way that Ainsley did. In a way that went beyond attraction, which is not the thing that is Sam’s issue, that had ever been Sam’s issue, whatever CJ might say. Girls _liked _musical theatre, at least in Sam’s experience. Girls liked musical theatre and they liked boys who liked musical theatre, they liked boys with dark hair and big blue eyes, they liked boys who were sensitive and nerdy and smart. That wasn’t the problem. The problem was that people never really liked Sam.

Sam had told Laurie about Lisa, once, about how he’d probably loved her and she’d probably loved him, but it hadn’t really worked out. Maybe never would’ve worked out, he thinks, in the end; and maybe he’d always known. But he had asked her, anyway; he had asked her, and she had said yes, and so.

And Laurie had said, “oh, Sam.”

He thinks about that sometimes, too. 

***

“So I think I know what this is about.”

Thursday evening: Sam in his kitchen, neatly overturning paper takeaway cartons, dumping their contents onto plates. Digging rice out of the corners with a fork. He has ceramic plates, here, silverware he doesn’t remember buying; probably they came with the apartment. They’re pretty nice. The rice is okay.

“Hey, Toby,” says Sam.

“You get out of the loop,” says Toby, waving his hands around in a way that’s clearly audible through the phone, “you get a – a whiff of sea air, you get to see the sun for more than five minutes in the day, then boom, stuck in the outside world. It’s like a drug. You took a hit, you’re addicted.”

“To the sun?” says Sam.

“To having a life,” says Toby. 

Sam raises an eyebrow. Toby can’t see it, but then, he’s Toby: he’ll know.

“And is that such a bad thing, having a life?” Sam asks. “Couldn’t that maybe, I don’t know, be seen by some as the whole point? Or a reasonable desire? At the very least a – pleasant bonus?”

“I wouldn’t know,” says Toby, “having never had one.”

Sam leans down, takes another bite of rice. Chews softly. There’s a certain hush to evening in California, even this close to LA; all Sam has to do is go inside, close the door. Lower his blinds if he wants to. They’re up tonight, his windows glowing orange-gold, sunset. Toby’s right; he can see it. It’s good. 

“It wouldn’t be so bad, Sam,” Toby says, “if that’s really what this was about.”

“You said that’s what you thought it was,” says Sam.

“No, that wasn’t what I said,” says Toby. “I said I thought I knew. I had a couple of theories.”

And Sam says, “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” says Toby. There’s a pause: Toby breathing in. “I thought maybe it was the MS.”

“It wasn’t the MS,” says Sam.

“Then,” says Toby, “I thought maybe it was Will Bailey.”

“What about Will Bailey?”

“That he maybe had something on you, for one.”

“You mean like blackmail?”

“Or black magic.”

“I don’t think he’s got either of those things,” says Sam. He smiles a little, just a little, into his rice. “I don’t think he’s even in the general vicinity of either of those things.”

“Yeah,” says Toby, “but that’s exactly what you’d say if he was.”

The light’s changing. Sam looks outside, out through the window, out at the sky which is purpling, slowly, not unlike a bruise. It’s quiet; he’s quiet. He can hear Toby breathing, on the other end of the line.

“I think it was his speech,” Toby says.

“His speech?”

“About the dead candidate,” says Toby, as if Sam doesn’t know. “His dead candidate. ‘There are worse things – ‘”

Sam says, “than no longer being alive.”

“Yes,” says Toby.

A pause: long, heavy. Sam tightens his grip on the phone.

“It was a good speech,” says Sam.

“You’ve written better.”

“Toby –”

“But he was the one giving it, right? He was – speaking,” Toby says; and Sam, and Sam says nothing. 

“That’s my theory,” says Toby. “That’s what this is about.”

“You thought I was jealous,” says Sam.

“I was going to say ‘ambitious’,” says Toby. “But no. I think you’ve got some crazy idea that, somehow, that makes him better than you.”

And Sam –

“Toby,” says Sam.

“Sam,” says Toby, “listen to me. Listen to me. Sam. You did not lose to a dead man.”

“No, Toby, I didn’t,” says Sam. “I lost to the guy who lost to a dead man.”

There’s something funny, in this; it’s funny, it should be, he shouldn’t sound so, he shouldn’t sound –

“No,” says Toby, “no, that’s not what happened. That’s not what happened here.”

“Really,” says Sam. “Then what is it that you think _did_ happen? Because I seem to recall –”

“I think the DNC shit the bed,” says Toby. He’s pacing, Sam can tell, can hear: footfalls, frustration. “I think you got saddled with a bunch of – of low-level flunkies who couldn’t get George Washington elected to the school board. I think the President came and held up traffic to Disneyland while me and Charlie got ourselves arrested and we all got you royally screwed, and I think it doesn’t even matter that any of that happened, Sam, because you were running in a race that none of us thought you could win. Not even you.”

“Toby –”

“Not even you, Sam,” Toby says. “We all agreed that wasn’t the point. We agreed.”

“Yeah,” says Sam.

“So you can quit with the – with the wallowing,” says Toby, “alright? You knew you were gonna get hit, you got hit, no big deal. It’s time to pick yourself up off the mat.” 

“Toby,” says Sam.

“Yeah?”

“That’s not what this is.”

A silence. Sam waits.

“No,” says Toby, softly, after a moment.

“Toby,” says Sam, “I’m not coming back.”

He sucks in a breath, Toby does, a sharp inhale. Gearing up for a second round; as if Sam was going to fight him. Then: the exhale, loud and long. Letting go.

“You tell Josh yet?” Toby says.

“I don’t work for Josh,” says Sam. “I work for you.”

“No,” says Toby, “you work for the President.”

“Well,” says Sam, “not anymore.”

A moment passes. Sam’s food’s gone cold; he eats it anyway, the too-salty beef, the dry rice. It’s getting dark, now, outside. Getting darker.

“You sure about this?” says Toby.

“Yeah,” says Sam.

“Because if you’re not,” says Toby, “if you have even, even the slightest hint of hesitation –”

“Toby –”

“He doesn’t write as well as you do,” Toby says. “He just doesn’t, Sam.”

“Toby,” says Sam, “I’m sure.”

There’s a pause, then:

“Okay,” Toby says.

Sam puts his fork down; it taps against his plate, a little clink in the silence. He thinks he can hear Toby sigh, just a little; but maybe he’s imagining it.

“You alright over there?” says Toby, eventually.

“Yeah,” says Sam, “yeah, I’m fine.”

“Okay,” says Toby. “Okay.”

***

There is a route Sam used to take, during transition, that he’d walk maybe once or twice a day when he had a meeting or a briefing or whatever, a route he took that ran like this: up from his desk then a sharp left into the hall, right down the hall to the doors of the OEOB, right down 17th Street, right down Pennsylvania Avenue, right up to the White House gates. He walked that route so many times that it became muscle memory in a week, left then right, right then right again, a path he could have walked with his eyes closed, though of course he never did because he’d probably have bumped into people if he had. Or, possibly, a tree. That would’ve been funny; CJ would’ve killed him, but it would’ve been funny. Anyway: he could have.

So it’s not, you know, it’s _not _– it should’ve been a little, a little less of a thing, walking that route again on that last day, or really the first day depending on how you looked at it: two hours after the speech and the swearing-in, arms loaded down with boxes, left then right, right and right and right again, into the lobby with its shiny marble floors. It should’ve been less of a thing, taking those boxes down another set of halls, over soft carpet and under arches and through heavy wooden doors. Sam had been here before, was the thing, it’s not like he hadn’t – like this was the first time, like it was new. So probably it should’ve been smaller, a smaller thing. But it wasn’t. It really hadn’t been, at all.

Leo had met him at the door – Sam remembers this vividly – at _his _door, with its plain dark wood and simple Yale lock and no nameplate, but _his _door, and Leo had met him there with a key. And Sam had seen him, coming into the communications bullpen, he’d seen him over the tops of the boxes, Sam had seen him and he’d been – well, he’d been –

He’d said, “Isn’t this more of a, more of a custodian’s job?”

And Leo had smiled, that little half-smile that meant that maybe you’d pissed him off but you couldn’t, you know, ever be sure, and he’d said: “And a good afternoon to you, too, Sam.”

And Sam had just sort of stared at him, over the tops of the boxes, and Leo had stared back, and Sam had been about to decide that maybe he’d better just lie down and die, right there, for the sake of his and possibly his family’s everlasting honour, but then Leo had smiled a little wider and opened the door.

And Sam had followed him inside. And Sam had gone to the desk, and Sam had put the boxes down. And then there Sam had been, there he had been: there. In his office, in the White House. There.

It had been – well.

“You did a good job with the Inaugural,” Leo had said, then, “have I mentioned that yet?”

“No, I don’t think so,” said Sam.

“Well, I’m mentioning it now,” said Leo.

“Oh,” Sam had said, “thanks.”

And Leo had looked him up and down, looked at Sam where he was standing by the desk – his desk – and Leo had cocked his head, just a little; blinked once, slowly.

He’d said, “Listen, Sam, I know we had a pretty flat organisational structure during the campaign, so I just wanted to make sure you –”

“We had an organisational structure during the campaign?” said Sam.

“To make sure you were comfortable –”

“I didn’t know we even had an organisation,” said Sam.

“_Comfortable _with your role in this administration,” Leo had said, and narrowed his eyes in a way that had made Sam want to duck and cover, what with his desk in such a convenient position for it, and all, “for instance, and to start with: I am your boss. You are aware of this, yes?”

“Yes,” said Sam, “of course. Um, sir.”

“Sam,” said Leo.

“Yeah,” said Sam, “okay.”

“You’ll be in the room,” Leo said, “you, CJ, you’ll be in the room, I don’t want you to feel like –”

“Yeah,” said Sam.

“_Sam_,” said Leo, and Sam had looked at him, then, looked at him properly, Leo, the _White House Chief of Staff_ – and it had been, it had been. It had been a feeling like vertigo, dizzy like the world suddenly spinning round around him; a feeling like being high up all of a sudden, very high up and looking down and finding everything just the wrong size.

“You’re in the senior staff, Sam,” Leo said, “it’s not a smaller position, it’s not less than –”

“Actually, technically it is,” said Sam, “but that’s fine.”

And Leo had looked at him like he was disappointed, somehow, like Sam had been – like he’d been some spoiled, pouting child, a little boy throwing a tantrum when he’d already gotten the ice cream; and Sam could understand that, really he could, but. Here’s the thing: he meant it. He’d meant it. Then, there, then: it really had been okay.

And so Sam had said, “No, really, Leo” and he’d said “I really don’t mind” and he’d said “I mean, just _look _at this,” and he’d meant –

Well, he’d meant the desk, the sturdy wood top; and he’d meant the big bank of windows behind and the cheap white blinds draped over them, and he’d meant the glass walls and the view out into the bullpen, and the big notice board, and the flimsy empty bookshelves, and the chairs. He’d meant all of it, this big empty room and the boxes on the floor, and he’d been thinking about those boxes, about how they’d gone everywhere with him, California to New Hampshire and back again – and now here they were, here on the carpet. In the room; in this room. They’d arrived.

Maybe it should’ve been a smaller thing. Maybe if he’d known – and he _had _known, already, some of it, what was making Leo nervous; that there were communications jobs and then there were communications jobs, that there were deputies and then there were _deputies_ – but maybe if he’d really _known_, really got it, maybe he would’ve felt it different, more, at all. Maybe if he’d known about – abolishing the penny, and pushing for a seat-belt law, while the others were – or about how his promises would start to shrink, or feel like they were shrinking, how he’d end up cutting and compromising, how hard he’d fight for the space even to do that much – maybe. But he hadn’t, and it wasn’t, it hadn’t been. It hadn’t been small; it had been big. It had been everything.

And Leo had looked with him, or at least Sam thought he had, at least he’d swept his eyes in the same direction – and he’d looked back at Sam. There had been something in his eyes, Sam remembers. He’ll always remember that: the look in Leo’s eyes.

“It’s not nothing, is it,” Leo had said, and Sam had smiled.

“No,” said Sam, “it most certainly is not.”

“We’re going to do good work here, Sam,” Leo said, and Sam remembers this too, thinks about it even after, years after – thinks about it whenever he thinks of Leo, who, however it had felt, had never lied to him, not exactly. Actually, technically, truly: he’d never really lied.

“Yeah,” Sam had said, “yeah, we are.”

And then Leo had nodded at Sam’s hand, and Sam had put out his palm, and Leo had put his key into it, _Sam’s _key, something small and sharp and shiny, heavier than it was.

“Welcome home, Sam,” Leo had said, and here’s the thing: then, there, then, Sam had believed him. 

***

“So I’ve been talking to Toby,” says Josh, “he’s saying the craziest thing –”

“I’m not coming back,” says Sam.

“Yeah, that’s what he’s been saying.”

“And why,” says Sam, “do you think that is?”

It’s Sunday. Coming on to midnight. Sam’s in bed, propped up against the headboard; lights off, lamp on. Muscles loose, relaxed. He can see the lights of the city outside his window, twinkling in the dark. 

“When were you going to tell me?” Josh asks, quiet.

“I don’t know,” says Sam. “I guess when you called.”

“Sam –”

“What do you want me to say, Josh?” 

“That you’ve booked a flight, and you’re packing a bag, and hey do you think you could come pick me up at the airport?”

“Look –” says Sam.

“The answer to that is no, by the way, I’m a very busy man.”

“Josh –” says Sam.

“A very busy, very powerful man.”

“Josh,” Sam says, and.

There’s a pause. A breath. Sam reaches for the glass on his nightstand, takes a sip of water.

“Why not?” asks Josh.

They’re bright, the lights, the ones outside; brighter than the ones he’d watched back in Washington. But further away, distant. Out there, like stars. There’s a question he’s been meaning to ask.

“Why didn’t we have any friends in college?” Sam asks, and that’s not quite it, but.

“What?” says Josh.

“At law school. We didn’t – why do you think that was?”

“We had friends!” says Josh, and he sounds so offended Sam smiles a little. “What are you talking about, we had – I had you, didn’t I? And, and Amy, and her boyfriend that I lived with –”

“Yeah?” says Sam. “What was his name?”

“I don’t know,” Josh says, “Matt?”

“I’m pretty sure it wasn’t Matt.”

“Or Alan or something. Why do you care what his name was?”

“I don’t. I’m just saying –”

“I don’t know, Sam,” says Josh – snaps, really, one hand almost certainly fisted in his hair, “maybe we intimidated them, huh? Come on. It was law school! We were surrounded by idiots! Maybe they were all just – deer, caught in the blinding headlights of our collective intellect.”

“Maybe,” says Sam. He takes another sip of water; a breath. “I’m just – I was just trying to figure out if maybe it was us.”

Josh is quiet for a long moment. Sam too, though differently: waiting. There’s a thrumming in his veins he recognises, from hours like this: late nights, pen and paper, long silences. Waiting for the words to come.

“I’m not –” Josh says; breaks off. Sam can hear him shifting: standing up, maybe, or lying down. Settling himself, somehow._ “_You know, usually when I gotta confront my insecurities like this I at least have a couch or something.”

“Sorry,” says Sam.

“Yeah, yeah,” says Josh.

A pause.

“You remember what I said,” says Sam, “back in – about ideas? What I said about –”

“Yeah,” says Josh. “’Ideas are better than people.’ Real – inspirational, by the way, that one, we should’ve made bumper stickers –”

“I never said that, _you_ said that. What _I_ said was –”

“Yeah,” says Josh, “I remember.”

Sam breathes in; breathes out. Long, hard. Shuts his eyes, just for a moment.

“I’m trying to answer your question,” he says.

“Okay,” says Josh.

It takes time, sometimes; Sam always forgets this, has to make himself remember: it takes time, the words. You just have to wait. That’s what writing is, really, the waiting, breathing through it. Sam breathes.

“Toby said,” says Sam, “that I didn’t lose to a dead man. He said, ‘you didn’t lose to a dead man, Sam’. He said that.”

“Yeah, you just lost to the guy who lost to –” says Josh, then audibly brakes. “Sorry.”

“No,” says Sam, “it’s – but not that, either.”

“No?”

“No,” says Sam. Takes a beat: breathes through it._ “_It was never – Will Bailey didn’t run a dead candidate. There was never any dead candidate. There was only the idea. What could’ve been. That’s what won, the idea. And I thought –”

“You thought you could beat it,” Josh says.

“No,” says Sam. “I thought I could be it.”

Another pause. Sam sits up, a little further, pushes himself back against the pillows, the headboard. There are many things about him that Josh has never tried to understand.

“Sam, it’s just one election,” says Josh. “You come back, you get back to work, if you want you can go beat this asshole in the next one.”

“It’s not,” says Sam. “It’s not one election. It’s the whole thing.”

Quiet on the line. Static crackle: a sigh.

“I know,” Josh says.

“I thought I could,” says Sam, “it’s not that I thought I could do something good, you understand? It’s that I thought I could _be_ –”

He swallows. Takes another drink; looks out, at the lights.

“I had all these ideas,” Sam says. “And when you came to get me, I don’t know, I thought I could be – well, some of those things at least. Some of those things I thought about.”

“Sam,” says Josh, “you – you’re –”

“I’m what?” says Sam. “Smart? Handsome? A good writer? A decent politician?” He smiles, wry, flexes his fingers against the receiver._ “_I thought I was all those things already.”

Josh laughs, soft and awkward. “You weren’t gonna say ‘humble’?”

“I wanted to be better,” says Sam. “I had all these ideas and I just – I thought I’d get to be better.”

Josh sucks in a breath, loud enough that Sam can hear it, crackle-hiss down the line. And another, and Sam can see him now: the free hand pulling at his curls, the grimace. Searching for something to say, and of course: Josh isn’t a writer; he’s never known how to wait. 

“We don’t,” Josh says,_ “_we don’t always get to be noble. But that’s just, that’s just the game, it’s not – it’s politics. None of us get to keep our hands clean.”

“I know,” says Sam.

“It’s just politics, Sam,” says Josh, “it’s not you,” and he pauses here, and his voice is something like raw, and Sam almost, he could almost – _“_It wasn’t you.”

Sam closes his eyes.

“I’m tired, Josh,” he says, and it comes out low, heavy, something true.

“You’re telling me,” says Josh.

“I mean it,” says Sam.

And Josh says, “yeah, I know.”

Past midnight now, so: Monday, then. It’s later in Washington. It’ll be dawn soon, there, in a few hours: the sun rising, the sky changing. Light pouring out over the mall, shining off white marble, glinting through windows. Sam will miss it, this sunrise. It will still be night where he is when it happens and he will miss it, he will sleep through.

“Gage Witney’s offered me a job,” says Sam.

“Seriously?” says Josh.

“Yeah.”

“But they fired you! They fired you with extreme prejudice!”

“I know,” says Sam, “I was there.”

“They threatened to have you disbarred!”

“Bet they’re glad they didn’t now.”

“Sam –”

“They’ve offered me my job back,” Sam says.

“_We’re _offering you your job back,” says Josh, and then, after a moment: “You’re gonna take it, aren’t you.”

And Sam says, “yeah.”

“How can you –” says Josh, breaking off into some incoherent noise of frustration, and here, now, Sam misses him, Sam misses him so hard it hurts. It’s not hard to admit it; if this changed anything it would have already.

“You’re better than that, Sam,” says Josh, eventually, and.

“Well,” says Sam, “maybe I’m not.”

They hold the line for a moment, just breathing, being, then: Sam shifts, slides himself under the blanket. Puts his finger on his lamp, the switch. It’s late, time to sleep, probably. For both of them; it’s time. 

“I’m gonna go now,” says Sam. “I’ll call you.”

“Sam –” says Josh.

“Bye, Josh,” says Sam; turns out the light. 

***

Once, when Sam and Josh were at law school together, there was a moot court. Well. There were many moot courts; it was law school. Usually Sam and Josh won them; sometimes other people helped.

But there was this once when there had been a moot and Sam and Josh had been preparing for it, and it had been evening, and Josh had wanted to do – something else, maybe go to a party, though probably not a party, Sam doesn’t remember – but something else. And they’d been in Sam’s room, with the big ugly desk Sam had dragged inside from some kerb back in the first week of school right in the middle of it, piled with notes and textbooks and little multicoloured post-its everywhere, and Josh had looked at all of it and done this Face, just this, you know, the Josh Face, and he had said –

Well, he’d said: “Sam, come on, this is boring.”

“I thought you liked constitutional law,” said Sam.

“No,” said Josh, “_you _like constitutional law, because constitutional law is for nerds, and you are a nerd.”

And Sam had said “fair enough”, and picked his highlighter back up, and managed to ignore Josh for another twelve minutes – a not-insignificant feat which many have attempted and few have truly managed, and that honestly he’s still a little proud of to this day – but then eventually he’d sighed and dropped the highlighter and looked up at Josh, who had been shaking his leg so hard the entire table rattled, and slowly, calmly, made eye contact.

“Yes?” said Sam.

“Well,” said Josh, “you know, a lot of things, but basically I think we’re done here. Do you not think we’re done here?”

“No,” said Sam, and reached out to steady his coffee cup before it completely overturned.

“_Sam_,” said Josh, sounding – well, not quite _whiny_, but certainly _pained_, “_please_. We’ve got – _so much _material here. Like five, maybe six trees’ worth. A small forest, Sam. I’ve got counter-counter-arguments coming out my ears. We’re done. Come on.” 

“We still haven’t written our closing statements,” said Sam, catching a precariously wobbly binder before it fell, “or even really our opening statements, so. I don’t think we are, actually.”

“We’ll just wing it,” Josh had said, “we’re highly intelligent people, that’s a thing we can _do_ –“

And it is at this point where, according to legend, or at least according to Josh, who, while drunk one night in a hotel room in Nevada on some of the whiskey CJ used to carry around in her purse during their first campaign, dramatically re-enacted this moment complete with hand gestures – according to legend, then, Sam had leapt indignantly to his feet, thrust out his chest, and proclaimed, “but we are merely people! And statements are about ideas! And IDEAS ARE BETTER THAN PEOPLE WILL EVER BE!”

Josh had, shortly after that bit of Nevada-hotel-room theatre, tripped over his shoelaces and fallen directly into a bedside lamp; and CJ had laughed so hard at this that she ended up lying on the floor with Toby holding a pillow over her face so Leo wouldn’t hear them from the next room; and so this is of course the version that they all remember. But what Sam actually said was this:

“Yes, but not as intelligent as our ideas are going to be,” is what Sam had said, “and that’s why we’re here, Josh, and doing law for nerds. Because the very existence of the Constitution suggests that there are ideas and ideals that aren’t intuitive, right, that need to be said because they don’t go without saying, but that we just might find valuable anyway. That we might want to preserve, and to live up to, for generations to come. That’s why we _have _ideas, that’s why we write them down. Because they’re better than us. And then we get to try to be better than them.”

Sam doesn’t remember what happened after that, if Josh had settled down and gotten back to work or if he’d just rolled his eyes and made them stop for dinner, or even if they’d won the moot, though probably they had. He remembers what he said, though. He remembers.

He told Toby this story, once, this version of it, sometime before the inauguration. They’d been tired and wired and frustrated, surrounded by dried-up pens and crumpled first drafts; but he’d told Toby this story, and Toby had looked at him: long, hard, strangely.

“And that’s why speechwriting?” Toby had said.

“Yeah,” Sam had replied.

And Toby had looked at him some more, and nodded once, and looked back down at the paper in his lap. The pen in his hand.

“So write the speech,” Toby said, and Sam did.


End file.
